Medical devices comprising catheter shafts and catheter balloons are used in an increasingly widening variety of applications including vascular dilatation, stent delivery, drug delivery, delivery and operation of sensors and surgical devices such as blades, and the like. The desired physical property profile for the balloons used in these devices varies according to the specific application, but for many applications a high strength robust balloon is necessary and good softness and trackability properties are highly desirable.
Commercial high strength balloons having wall strengths in excess of 20,000 psi have been formed of a wide variety of polymeric materials, including PET, nylons, polyurethanes and various block copolymer thermoplastic elastomers. A particular application which has a very high pressure requirement is reopening of stenoses which develop at or in long-term shunt, ports or grafts employed for repeated blood access, for instance with dialysis patients. Such stenoses are often highly calcified and essentially must be subjected to very high pressure for successful treatment. Moreover, frequently the vessels into which the access devices are connected are quite large. Consequently there is a need for balloons whose pressure profile allows for use of pressures in excess of 20 atm at balloon diameters which can exceed 5 mm.
Documents relating to fiber reinforced medical balloons include U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,669, Behate; U.S. Pat. No. 4,706,670, Andersen; U.S. Pat. No. 5,647,848, Jorgensen; U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,706, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,330,429, Noguchi; U.S. Pat. No. 5,827,289, Reiley; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,156,254, Andrews.
The art referred to and/or described above is not intended to constitute an admission that any patent, publication or other information referred to herein is “prior art” with respect to this invention. In addition, this section should not be construed to mean that a search has been made or that no other pertinent information as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.56(a) exists.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.